TIMING: 2.5 minutes. Frame as ADDITIVE, never competitive. SAY: "Let me be direct about the fit. [Left column] This group already does outstanding work — Professor Liem's European Homicide Monitor, Professor Weenink's work on violence dynamics, Dr. Di Marco's research on why men kill their partners, and the governance dimension with policing. [Gesture right] What I add is four things. First, upstream prevention: I don't just study violence after it happens — I build programs that prevent it, starting with communities. Second, computational tools that can scale your existing data. Third — and this matters for a group at a Dutch university — I've done community-partnered fieldwork in the Caribbean, in former colonial territories where the legacies of colonialism continue to shape who is exposed to violence and who has access to prevention. In postcolonial contexts, you can't just export a European framework and expect it to work. You have to build with communities, from the bottom up. And fourth, I was part of the ESCUDO team that trained over 1,800 police officers in harm reduction. I know how institutions work from the inside." TRANSITION: "Let me show you the research."

TIMING: 1 minute. Quick overview — point to each pillar. SAY: "My research follows a pipeline. First, Review: what prevention programs exist, and what actually works? The answer, from over 5,000 studies: almost nothing that addresses violence and substance use together. Second, Surveillance: using national data to map exactly where the need is — which communities, which ages, which circumstances. I've done this with U.S. adolescent surveys, death records, and Belize's national survey. And third, Intervention: building prevention where the data says it's needed, with the communities who live there. A bystander program in Kentucky and a life-skills curriculum in Belize. Let me walk you through each one."

TIMING: 2.5 minutes. Play video. KEY FINDINGS if summarizing: (1) No difference in Years 1-3, effect emerged ONLY in Year 4 — lasting change takes sustained effort. (2) Boys 1.7x more likely to endorse victim-blaming than girls. (3) Non-White students endorsed at 1.5x rate — need culturally responsive programming. (4) Attitudes shifted but reported violence did not yet decrease — norms change before behavior. CONNECTION TO WEENINK: Green Dot trains bystanders to intervene — the same dynamic Weenink's "Circles of Peace" (BJC 2022, https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/62/1/18/6299950) captures in real-time. My evaluation provides outcome evidence for the process he observes. Together we could connect situational dynamics to population-level outcomes.

TIMING: 2.5 minutes. Play video. KEY FINDINGS: (1) Three explanations tested: risk-taking, emotional pain, tough circumstances — all mattered. (2) Bullying ONLY factor uniquely linked to opioids, not alcohol/marijuana/cigarettes/cocaine. Social rejection activates same brain pathways opioids target. (3) Ethnic differences: Latino youth driven by life circumstances, White youth by prescription access, Black youth by emotional distress, Multiracial youth highest rates (identity stress). (4) All three explanations overlap — accumulated burden, not neat categories. DEATHS OF DESPAIR CONNECTION: Opioid misuse clusters with suicidal thoughts, dating violence, and bullying — extends Prof. Liem & Moeller's drugs-violence framework.

TIMING: 3 minutes. This is the crown jewel. Name three group members. WHY TOLEDO context (moved from slide face): My analysis of Belize's national MICS5 survey showed that violence tolerance is not evenly spread. Nationally, 9.8% of people justify physical violence against a partner. But among Maya adolescents in Toledo District, that number is 34.1% — 3.5 times the national rate. The data told me exactly where to go. So I went. SAY: "This is the heart of my work. THRIVE-Belize is a life-skills curriculum for adolescents in southern Belize — in the Toledo District. [Point to map] I didn't pick Toledo randomly. My analysis of Belize's national survey showed that violence tolerance concentrates dramatically: 10% nationally, but 34% among Maya adolescents in Toledo. The data told me where. So I went. I moved to Punta Gorda, worked with teachers and students at Toledo Community College, and together we built this curriculum from the ground up. [Point to modules] Seven modules, 28 sessions. Module 2 — the Man Box sessions — where adolescent boys name harmful masculinity norms, feel the cost of rigidity, and commit to change. [Di Marco] Dr. Di Marco, your book 'Taking Lives' shows us how rigid masculinity norms create a pathway to lethal violence. My curriculum tries to intervene before those norms take root. [Van Wieringen] Layla, your systematic review shows how extremist ideologies pass from parents to children. THRIVE addresses a parallel mechanism — how harmful masculinity norms are transmitted across generations — and tries to interrupt that process early. [Liem] Professor Liem, THRIVE addresses upstream what the Femicide Monitor documents downstream." TRANSITION: "Now let me show you the surveillance tools."

TIMING: 2 minutes. SAY: "Hidden Partners uses the U.S. National Violent Death Reporting System to find intimate partner violence that's hiding in plain sight. When a pregnant woman dies — by homicide, suicide, or overdose — the partner is often mentioned in the narrative text but never coded as a variable. I built a text classifier to make them visible. This bridges all three Deaths of Despair dimensions in a single study. [Liem] Professor Liem, the pipeline I built for NVDRS narratives transfers directly to the EHM and Femicide Monitor. I bring the methods, you have the data." TRANSITION: "Let me show you how all this surveillance work fits together."

TIMING: 2 minutes. Point to each node and name concrete outputs. SAY: "Let me make the connections concrete. These are not vague overlaps — these are specific collaborations I've planned. [Liem] Professor Liem: a joint paper applying my text analysis methods to EHM case descriptions, plus a comparative U.S.-European analysis of partner violence in death records. I bring NVDRS access through my collaboration with Dr. Maeve Wallace. [Weenink] Professor Weenink: a co-authored study connecting your micro-level observation of bystander dynamics with my population-level outcome evaluation from Green Dot. [Di Marco] Dr. Di Marco: co-supervision of a PhD student examining masculinity norms from both ends — prevention programs and desistance narratives. Your 'Taking Lives' work and my THRIVE curriculum are two sides of the same coin. [Van Wieringen] Layla: a family-focused prevention module building on your intergenerational transmission research. [Aarten] Dr. Aarten: joint analysis of the victim-offender overlap in adolescents, combining my YRBS data with European datasets. [Dekker] Professor Dekker: an evidence synthesis directly informing the T@CKLE intervention design, drawn from my systematic review. These are not ideas I came up with this morning. I have read your work, and I know how to build on it."

TIMING: 2 minutes. Be direct about needing their support on Aim 3. SAY: "Three aims across three years. [Aim 1] First, I'll adapt my text analysis tools to work with the Femicide Monitor and EHM. Open-source, replicable, shareable across countries. [Aim 2] Second, a cross-national comparison of how violence, substance harm, and suicide cluster — using the unique comparability between the EHM and the Dutch Caribbean Homicide Monitor. [Aim 3] Third — and this is where I need your support — a grant for a multi-site life-skills intervention in former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. THRIVE-Belize is the proof of concept. The Caribbean territories share structural conditions shaped by colonial legacies. I believe we can build programs that work. But I can't do this alone. [Pause] Five to six publications. An open-source toolkit. A major grant submission. All integrated with what you already have."

TIMING: 2.5 minutes. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SLIDE. Be passionate but precise. SAY: "This is why I need your support. [Point to map] Six territories in the Caribbean, all part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. About 330,000 people. [Point to bars] Professor Liem's Dutch Caribbean Homicide Monitor has already documented the scale: Curaçao's homicide rate reached 19 per 100,000 in 2017 — 25 times higher than the European Netherlands. Sint Maarten shows similar figures. Even Aruba, the safest of the group, runs 3 to 4 times higher. [Pause] But here's what matters: homicides are only what we can count. Behind every homicide statistic are young people growing up with gang pressure, substance use, domestic violence, rigid ideas about masculinity — problems that cluster in the same individuals and the same communities. The DCHM tells us who is dying. It doesn't tell us how to keep them alive. [Point to THRIVE] That's where THRIVE comes in. In Belize, I used national survey data to find where violence tolerance concentrates, went there, and built a life-skills curriculum with teachers and students. The same logic applies here. The DCHM is the starting point for a broader prevention agenda. Life-skills programs — addressing the whole person, not just one risk factor — are promising. But I can't do this alone. I need this group's institutional support, your Caribbean networks, and a joint grant application to make it real."

TIMING: 1.5 minutes. Be concrete. SAY: "Three teaching contributions. First, the Minor in Violence Studies — an undergraduate program open to students from any faculty. I would bring prevention science and Global South case studies into the curriculum. Real examples from Belize, Mexico, the border. If you want to understand violence, you have to go where it happens and listen to the people living it. Second, a new course this specialization doesn't currently have: computational methods for violence research. Text analysis, machine learning, reproducible workflows. I use AI in my teaching — to help students learn, not to replace their thinking. And third, for the MSc specialization, I would develop a course on how to design, implement, and evaluate violence prevention interventions. This draws on what I learned working alongside police officers in Tijuana through the ESCUDO project, and on the prevention programs I've built and evaluated in Kentucky and Belize."

TIMING: 30 seconds. Eye contact. Let it land. SAY: "I don't just study violence from a distance. I work alongside communities to prevent it. [Pause] My ethnographic training taught me to listen before I try to model. National data tells me where to go. And fieldwork — in Belizean classrooms, Tijuana police stations, communities at the U.S.-Mexico border — that's where the real work happens. [Pause] I believe effective prevention starts from the bottom up. With communities, not committees. With listening, not lecturing. And I bring that approach — along with the computational tools to make it scalable — to everything I do. Thank you." Q&A PREP: (1) How would you prioritize among the three aims? Start with Aim 1 because it's the quickest win using existing data. Aim 3 is the long-term legacy piece. (2) What challenges adapting text analysis to Dutch text? Language-specific tokenization, but the pipeline architecture transfers. Would collaborate with Dutch-speaking colleagues for validation. (3) How does THRIVE scale beyond one school? The MICS5 cascade methodology identifies the next target communities. (4) Grant mechanisms? NWO Veni, NWO Open Competition, Horizon Europe Cluster 2. (5) Your on-the-ground experience — how does it inform your research differently? I've seen what programs look like when they fail in practice. Theory doesn't prepare you for a 16-year-old who won't participate, or a principal who cancels your sessions. Ethnographic experience means I design for reality, not for journals. (6) Dutch language? I'm committed to learning. I speak English and Spanish fluently.

Q&A PREPARATION NOTES: (1) "How will you adapt your U.S./Belize methods to a European context?" My text analysis pipeline is language-agnostic in architecture — the NLP components need retraining on Dutch/European text, but the pipeline design transfers directly. I would collaborate with Dutch-speaking colleagues for validation. For the Caribbean work, the former Dutch colonies (Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius) share institutional structures with the Netherlands — the Dutch Caribbean Homicide Monitor already uses the EHM framework, which is a ready-made bridge. (2) "What's your Dutch language plan?" I'm committed to learning Dutch. I speak English and Spanish fluently, and I learned English as an adult through immersion fieldwork. I would begin Dutch classes before arriving and continue intensively during my first year. Most MSc courses are in English, but I take integration seriously — being part of a community means speaking its language. (3) "How does your work fit the Deaths of Despair framing specifically?" Deaths of Despair — Case and Deaton's framework — is the thread connecting my NVDRS work (partner-related deaths across all three dimensions), my YRBS study (substance use as response to accumulated hardship), and my intervention work (THRIVE addresses upstream conditions that produce despair). What I add is the prevention dimension: not just documenting despair, but testing whether community-based programs can interrupt the trajectories that produce it.